Turning Pro Quotes

“The sure sign of an amateur is he has a million plans and they all start tomorrow.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“The amateur dreads becoming who she really is because she fears that this new person will be judged by others as "different." The tribe will declare us "weird" or "queer" or "crazy." The tribe will reject us. Here's the truth: the tribe doesn't give a shit. There is no tribe. That gang or posse that we imagine is sustaining us by the bonds we share is in fact a conglomeration of individuals who are just as fucked up as we are and just as terrified. Each individual is so caught up in his own bullshit that he doesn't have two seconds to worry about yours or mine, or to reject or diminish us because of it. When we truly understand that the tribe doesn't give a damn, we're free. There is no tribe, and there never was. Our lives are entirely up to us.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls. Not to act upon that ambition is to turn our backs on ourselves and on the reason for our existence.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“Turning pro is like kicking a drug habit or stopping drinking. It's a decision, a decision to which we must re-commit every day.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“When we're living as amateurs, we're running away from our calling — meaning our work, our destiny, the obligation to become our truest and highest selves. Addiction becomes a surrogate for our calling. We enact the addiction instead of embracing the calling. Why? Because to follow a calling requires work. It's hard. It hurts. It demands entering the pain-zone of effort, risk, and exposure.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“The amateur tweets. The pro works.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“The payoff of living in the past or the future is you never have to do your work in the present.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“Many artists are addicts, and vice versa. Many are artists in one breath and addicts in another. What's the difference? The addict is the amateur; the artist is the professional.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“THE HUMAN CONDITION The Daily Show reported recently that scientists in Japan had invented a robot that is capable of recognizing its own reflection in a mirror. "When the robot learns to hate what it sees," said Jon Stewart, "it will have achieved full humanity.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“The amateur allows his worth and identity to be defined by others. The amateur craves third-party validation. The amateur is tyrannized by his imagined conception of what is expected of him. He is imprisoned by what he believes he ought to think, how he ought to look, what he ought to do, and who he ought to be.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“Ambition, I have come to believe, is the most primal and sacred fundament of our being. To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls. Not to act upon that ambition is to turn our backs on ourselves and on the reason for our existence.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“What happens when we turn pro is, we finally listen to that still, small voice inside our heads. At last we find the courage to identify the secret dream or love or bliss that we have known all along was our passion, our calling, our destiny.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“What we get when we turn pro is, we find our power. We find our will and our voice and we find our self-respect. We become who we always were but had, until then, been afraid to embrace and to live out.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“habits and qualities that the professional possesses that the amateur doesn't: 1. The professional shows up every day 2. The professional stays on the job all day 3. The professional is committed over the long haul 4. For the professional, the stakes are high and real Further: 5. The professional is patient 6. The professional seeks order 7. The professional demystifies 8. The professional acts in the face of fear 9. The professional accepts no excuses 10. The professional plays it as it lays 11. The professional is prepared 12. The professional does not show off 13. The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique 14. The professional does not hesitate to ask for help 15. The professional does not take failure or success personally 16. The professional does not identify with his or her instrument 17. The professional endures adversity 18. The professional self-validates 19. The professional reinvents herself 20. The professional is recognized by other professionals”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“The professional does not wait for inspiration; he acts in anticipation of it. He”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“I will gladly shell out $24.95 or $9.99 or 99 cents on iTunes to read or see or listen to the 24-karat treasure that you have refined from your pain and your vision and your imagination. I need it. We all do. We're struggling here in the trenches. That beauty, that wisdom, those thrills and chills, even that mindless escape on a rainy October afternoon — I want it. Put me down for it.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“The professional knows when he has fallen short of his own standards. He will murder his darlings without hesitation, if that's what it takes to stay true to the goddess and to his own expectations of excellence.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“Our job, as souls on this mortal journey, is to shift the seat of our identity from the lower realm to the upper, from the ego to the Self. Art”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“The children who were able to sit for three minutes with a marshmallow on the table in front of them without eating it were rewarded with two marshmallows when the experimenter returned. But that's as crazy as inbox-watching. Krishna said we have the right to our labor, but not to the fruits of our labor. He meant that the piano is its own reward, as is the canvas, the barre, and the movieola. Fuck the marshmallows.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“Once we turn pro, we're like sharks who have tasted blood, or renunciants who have glimpsed the face of God. For us, there is no finish line. No bell ends the bout. Life is the pursuit. Life is the hunt. When our hearts burst... then we'll go out, and no sooner.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“The Spartan king Agesilaus was still fighting in armor when he was eighty-two. Picasso was painting past ninety, and Henry Miller was chasing women (I'm sure Picasso was too) at eighty-nine.

Once we turn pro, we're like sharks who have tasted blood, or renunciants who have glimpsed the face of God. For us, there is no finish line. No bell ends the bout. Life is the pursuit. Life is the hunt. When our hearts burst... then we'll go out, and no sooner.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“The sword master stepping onto the fighting floor knows he will be facing powerful opponents. Not the physical adversaries whom he will fight (though those indeed serve as stand-ins for the enemy). The real enemy is inside himself. The monk in meditation knows this. So does the yogi. So do the film editor and the video-game creator and the software writer.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“When we're living as amateurs, we're running away from our calling — meaning our work, our destiny, the obligation to become our truest and highest selves.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“If the upper realm is, as Plato suggested, the sphere of perfect love, truth, justice, and beauty, then the artist seeks to call down the magic of this world and to create, by dint of labor and luck, the closest-to-sublime simulacra of those qualities that he or she can.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“The Gnostics believed that exile was the essential condition of man. Do you agree? I do. The artist and the addict both wrestle with this experience of exile. They share an acute, even excruciating sensitivity to the state of separation and isolation, and both actively seek a way to overcome it, to transcend it, or at least to make the pain go away. What is the pain of being human? It's the condition of being suspended between two worlds and being unable to fully enter into either.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“If addictions and shadow careers are metaphors, sex is the richest one of all and the most difficult to decode. Why are we obsessed with sex? Does sex represent conquest or surrender? Are we seeking the oblivion of orgasm or the transcendence of escaping the ego? Is union with another our goal, or are we seeking to dominate or humiliate our partner? Is sex about love? Are we seeking a soul-mate, a mother/father? Are we trying to reach God? "I don't see what all the fuss about sex is," said the comedian. "It's only friction." My”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“The pain of being human is that we're all angels imprisoned in vessels of flesh.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“Do you understand? I hadn't written anything good. It might be years before I would, if I ever did at all. That didn't matter. What counted was that I had, after years of running from it, actually sat down and done my work.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“When we raise our game aesthetically, we elevate it morally and spiritually as well.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

“The clash is epic and internal, between the ego and the Self, and the stakes are our lives.”
― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro